Remember all those progress reports on MFBville? Remember how not too long ago I was working at a square-a-week clip? Remember how I’ve stopped doing that? Yeah. Sigh.

The good news is this: the first project I chose in favor of continuing on with MFBville is back from the framer.

I’m insanely pleased with how this piece turned out. The frame Sandy (at the Attic) chose is perfect. Just rustic enough to go with the fox and cornucopia, but not too country to look out of place in our Modwardian decor. I think this might be the first picture to come close to accurately showing the tone of the hand-dyed linen. I hung this one up next to the front hall closet, so that when I’m leaving for work in the morning I can be reminded of how exciting it is to need gloves for driving again, and when I come home in the evening I can be reminded of how cozy our living room looks from the street with the window winking light.

So what’s the bad news, Gentle Reader? The bad news is I can’t figure out what to be working on now. I briefly returned to MFBville and finished the writing in the boring fifth square, but just wasn’t feeling it. Every now and then I’ll find myself working on a beautiful project but without being able to see it’s beautiful. I just couldn’t see the forest for the trees, and that’s usually a sign to put it down for a while. But where to go from there? There are so many choices!

Another problem I encountered was that mid-way through last month I started to get struck with the Christmas spirit. This wasn’t helped by flipping through my stash of charts to pick a small project to take on our trip to Dallas. The “holiday” section of the stash wasn’t just calling to me — it was singing! Singing Christmas carols! Plugging my ears with wax didn’t help and so…

I had this charcoal-colored linen on tap for one of the older Prairie Schooler santas, but the newest charts are just so darn cute! I started this thinking I’d do a four-square, but after doing one santa and one snowman, I decided they were too adorable not to do six of the eight. I was zipping through them but then I got struck by a horrible thought — what if I finished them too soon?

I have a traditional Christmas stitching game plan which has me working on one of Priairie Schooler’s “Woodland Santas” in late December, but at this rate, I was going to finish the santas and snowmen too soon, leaving me with extra time in December with no Christmas stitching. That would never do! So I re-evaluated my stash and decided we have a lack of Thanksgiving stitching pieces and wouldn’t it be nice to celebrate the month of November?

I pulled out the threads and linen for Blue Ribbon Designs’ “An Expression of Gratitude”, a band sampler that features a verse about gathering together to count our blessings, or something to that effect.

It’s all pretty and serene, with its Autumnal Belle Soie threads and its glowing golden linen. I spruced it up a bit by using long armed cross for the dividing band, and I have plans to substitute some four-sided stitch in the name and date and the bottom. All of this should be exciting and fun, and the colors should be speaking to my Autumnlonging-brain. But…

Here’s the thing. Schnookie just started a new a project. A new Prairie Schooler project. A new Christmas Prairie Schooler. It has bright holiday reds and greens, and she’s stitching a pretty snowflake as I type. It’s killing me! Every time I look over at her end of the couch there’s a holly cluster taunting me. The stupid acorns on the Gather Together sampler took forever, the alphabet seemed never-ending, and there was that Christmas project laughing at me! I just couldn’t take it! I expressed concern that if I picked the santas and snowmen back up, I’d end up without enough Christmas stitching to do in the long run.

So what does Boomer do? She runs downstairs to her stitching stash and returns with this:

Backbird Designs’ “Peppermint and Holly”. [Happy sigh.] My love for Blackbird Designs is evident in how many of their designs show up in the quarterly season stitching post. My love for Christmas stitching is well known. Put the two together? I’m toast. In particular, this book boasts this fabulous poinsettia piece:

How beautiful is that? We don’t have any poinsettias in any of our Christmas pieces! It calls for overdyed flosses with colors like Dark Chocolate and Holly Berry! They might as well be “Christmas Candy” and “Christmas Tree”!

So here I sit, surrounded by projects. Do I be responsible and continue working on the Thanksgiving piece since it’s still only November 2nd? Do I be really responsible and say I should be finishing big projects instead of focusing on cop-out little projects? (I won’t be stitching 2008 on any large samplers; I’ve finished at least one every year since 2001.) Do I be realistic and say this is a hobby and I should do what makes me happy? Do I finish the adorable santas and snowmen now, knowing I have “Peppermint and Holly” waiting for me? Do I go crazy and start the poinsettia now because… well, because I can?

More importantly, what I am doing blogging when I should be stitching? Like I said, I’m a wreck!

I say stitch whatever makes you happy. If you need a break from horns o’plenty and pilgrims, work on something Christmas-y for awhile. Otherwise, you’ll start to hate that Thanksgiving stitching.

I like that Christmas piece that you started. I know you said the linen it’s on is a charcoal color, but on my work computer, it looks like a medium mocha color, which is really making the red and white pop out.

If you had any idea what kind of a theoretical mess (on graph paper using felt tip pens) I made when I tried to design something using your AWESOME alphabet book and borders from my hokey sampler book, your well-talented stitcher self would just croak. CROAK!

But these are all adorable, and you know, while I normally resent Christmassy things this early in the year, I totally get why you can’t resist the snowmen and Santas! Go with your gut! It’s a hobby! No need for undue pressure! Plus, I have found that when you’re not digging a project, it tends to just linger on a shelf eying you, trying to make you feel guilty, saying things like “dude, by the time you finish me, that baby will be in kindergarten!” Not that I know what that’s like, at all.

Excellent! I’m going to start my next Christmas project this week too. HR sent a parcel and she had told me over the phone to not open it until November 30. WHAT!? Well I did my best last night and I opened it with her on the phone! She made me the coolest advent calendar with little pockets filled with chocolates and other goodies! So now I’m going to use my cheap NHL chocolate advent calendar to count down until December 1 and then use the real one. EEEEEEeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!

I mentioned to my friend who mentioned that she has never had an advent, chocolate or otherwise, and I said she should invent one that is a pregnancy advent calendar so she could have chocolate every day for MONTHS! I think I should get on this idea and make advents for all sorts of things like birthdays, babies, hockey season, first day of summer, etc.

make advents for all sorts of things like birthdays, babies, hockey season, first day of summer

That’s genius! I have definitely thought of getting a less Christmas-y advent calendar and using it to count down to hockey, but I think a honest-to-gosh hockey themed one would be awesome. We could publish it as part of my plan to start a sports-themed greeting card company!

so I say, the poinsettia!!!

I was happy with the santas and snowmen but now that I’m seeing this comment I’m like, “Maybe Carol’s right… Maybe I should start the poinsettia!” I may be a relatively fast stitcher, but at this rate, I’ll never, ever finish anything ever again! :D